Sleeping in an airport. I don't do it very well at the best of times, but Budapest's Ferenc Liszt International is harder than many to sleep in. Actually I didn't sleep at all. But surprise surprise, Mari didn't have much trouble. Seriously, I wish I could that. Once 5am rolled around it was time for her to do the check-in and all the other usual airport stuff, and by 5:30 she was off back to Pontevedra, with one day in Brussels along the way, where she would stay with my mate Ludovic. We said our farewells - we wouldn't see each other again for about a month, which hadn't happened since we met. But with whatsapp, skype and all that stuff, it wouldn't be so bad.

Now I was on my own, and the second phase of the trip was beginning. It had been a difficult decision to decide which direction I was going to head in (north to Slovakia? Directly towards Romania? Stay in Hungary?), and I still wasn't completely sure, so I decided to go to Pécs [paych] to relax a bit and come up with a loose itinerary for the next part of the trip. Pécs, (a town in the southern Hungarian region of Transdanubia) was actually a place where Mari and I had planned to go, since historically it seemed quite interesting, with traces of its Roman and Ottoman past. However, we skipped it due to time and cost reasons. So anyway, I made way back to the city centre and caught a train to Pécs at about 10am. Finally I could get a little bit of sleep!

After arriving at the station some three and a half hours later, I did the usual thing of walking around trying to find a map, but had to go about fifteen minutes walking until I found one in the city centre. I found the hostel I'd booked - actually it was about two minutes from the station, damnit! It was also about thirty-five degrees so I was dripping pretty hard with the backpacks and all. At least the hostel turned out to be very comfortable, if not lacking a little in atmosphere. I didn't care that much though, because I wasn't here to be social as much as just tuning out for a couple of days. I hung around the hostel most of the day organising stuff, before going out for a little walk to acquaint myself with the town.

Upon returning to the hostel I was a zombie, so after an ice cold shower I hit the sack for a while, eventually waking up and seeing a note next to my bed. Another guy had arrived in the room (despite being a dorm I had basically had it to myself), Marco from Italy, introducing himself and asking if I wanted to go for drinks. Not long later I met him - he was a really friendly guy, an engineer who had given that up to move around and be a musician. He also had a basic grasp of Hungarian because of some girl he'd been going out with. We didn't do anything that night, as most things had already shut down by the time we met (and plus I just wanted to sleep more), but we would hang out tomorrow, when I would actually explore the city properly.